


Strength of Stone

by thequidditchpitch_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Friendship, Hogwarts Era, The Quidditch Pitch: From Diagon Alley to Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-03
Updated: 2006-09-03
Packaged: 2018-10-26 13:28:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10787622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequidditchpitch_archivist/pseuds/thequidditchpitch_archivist
Summary: Introspective into the Headmistress.





	Strength of Stone

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Annie, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Quidditch Pitch](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Quidditch_Pitch), which went offline in 2015 when the hosting expired, at a time I was not able to renew it. I contacted Open Doors, hoping to preserve the archive using an old backup, and began importing these works as an Open Doors-approved project in April 2017. Open Doors e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Quidditch Pitch collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thequidditchpitch/profile).

  
Author's notes:

Disclaimer: The Harry Potter books and all characters, places, et al within are property of JK Rowling.  No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made.  This story is for entertainment purposes only.

Author's Notes: Just a little something rattling around in my head.  Muchas gracias to Thevina, my gracious beta and mistress of wordcraft.  All mistakes are mine.

* * *

It's well past midnight, the fledgling moon high in its arc across the heavens.  The pale light reflected off the quartz veins of the ancient stones comprising the castle.  It caused only a faint glow, not a halo or corona to suggest this was a sacred place.  Rather, it gave off a comforting light, much like a candle in the window, letting weary travelers know that they had indeed arrived home and were welcomed.

 

 Minerva had not found many reasons to be straying from her post, especially late at night, but she had returned on enough occasions to witness the luminous walls beckoning her back to a warm fire and a soft bed.  Most times, like tonight, she was only aware of it on a peripheral level as she watched her domain from atop the Astronomy Tower.  It was reassuring, wherever she happened to be, to feel the solidity of Hogwarts around her.  While it might seem silly to others, she had always had the impression of the castle as a living entity, its pulse thrumming with over a millennia of magic.  Even when she assumed her Animagus form and slinked through its halls on feline feet, she could still sense the power held within the very rock.

 

Sometimes, she felt a kinship with the castle.  As she looked out upon the grounds, she could see a faint mist crawling low upon the ground.  It was thicker about the walls and thinned away into curling tendrils the farther it went, as though the castle had issued out a sigh of relief that the long day was over and its breath was flowing out across the lawn.  She felt quite the same way.  Both had protected their wayward charges and now that she had seen them off to bed (making sure they stayed there first), she could relax for a moment.

 

Minerva did wish she had more in common with her aged home.  Despite the fact that she was a tough old bird, as many of her peers had dubbed her, she was not immortal.  She may have forty years or more ahead of her, if she was lucky, but she could no longer feel the time stretching out before as she once could.  She was tired.  Her bones ached in the damp and pervading chill of winters in Scotland and her once proud stride had faltered.  She knew it was fruitless to deny the inevitability of aging, but she could not help but worry that one day her existence would not be worthwhile.  Her greatest fear was to be useless.

 

Her family was long gone, but she had left that part of her life decades before.  She had chosen to be a teacher, an honorable profession to be sure and a calling that she had found to be infinitely pure.  She would help to mold new generations of witches and wizards, like hewing diamonds from rock.  She would be able to witness the light shining in thousands of eyes as students called forth their first controlled magic and delight in their newfound skill with them.  She would impart all of her knowledge, give them everything she had learned and would continue to learn, wholeheartedly.  She would leave her stamp upon the world in the most meaningful way.

 

What Minerva didn't realize so long ago was how the years and those she instructed would leave their mark upon her.  Her enthusiasm dulled under the strain of responsibility.  She found that not all students shared her love for her craft.  They would snicker, passing notes back and forth in class, treating her lessons like parlor tricks instead of the important skills she knew they needed to learn.  At first she was hurt, and took to licking her wounds in her chambers after classes had ended.  The realization that perhaps she had failed as a professor stung sharply until she came to the conclusion that she must change her methods.  She was too naïve in believing that everyone had the same passion for learning as she did.  Although shattering her dreams of what her classroom should be like ached, she knew she had to disabuse herself of her ideal views on teaching in order to stay true to her task.   

 

It was a trial by fire, this growing up period, and made her strong as tempered steel.  If they did not want to learn, she would bully them into learning.  Her gaze grew sharper, her tone more stern and she became known as a compassionless taskmaster.  If only her students knew that she had changed for them, that their failures were her failures and her pride was in every positive effort they made.  Her world hinged on the minds that filled her classroom every day, even if she rarely showed it.

 

News would arrive to her of an alumni's successes and she would rejoice in having some small part in their achievement.  Other times, the news would be grimmer. The deaths of Lily and James Potter at Voldemort's hand, the couple once in her house and under her care, had moved her to an unheard of public display of tears.  

 

Now their son was a Gryffindor.  She had tried to lead him the best she could, offering advice or simply pushing him into what she hoped was the right direction.  After years of teaching, she felt that this boy's fate and that of his young companions would either signal the pinnacle of her career or the end of her world.  Possibly even her life.  

 

Her emotions wavered when she thought of the battles ahead.  Fighting Lord Voldemort would take everything Harry had and she wondered if there was anything more she could do or could have done.  The war nipped at their heels daily and soon her wards would not be under her protection.  Hermione, one of the brightest pupils she had ever had the pleasure of knowing, might not have the future Minerva had always hoped for one so talented.  Ron, whose awkwardness and loyalty to his friends had won him her equally awkward affection, may not get the chance to settle down and have a family to rival his parents.  

 

It was not her wont to become so maudlin, but she had become increasingly so of late.  In private, of course, where thoughts of despair would seep in after she had shut her chamber door against the din of her students.  Perhaps it was yet another sign of her age, like the ropey veins laying across the backs of her hands or the ash in her hair.  A sign of weakness that she despised; giving into it was pure selfishness, in her opinion.  There were far more important things to concern herself with, especially since she was now Headmistress.  Determinedly, she cast away the depressing thoughts, particularly the new ones brought about by thinking about her new title.  There was no sense in indulging herself further by going down that road.

 

Minerva straightened her stooped shoulders.  She gathered her tartan scarf more tightly around her while at the same time mentally reassuming the rigid mantle that seemed to grow heavier daily.  Taking one last look at the grounds, she paused to pat the stone sill and whispered to the castle itself.  "Give me strength."

 

The Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry then turned and descended the stairs to complete her rounds.


End file.
